London

‘It’s a bit like the playground where the biggest child rules, though here it’s capital that plays a huge role,’ says an investment banker with one of the big houses. But no one institution or group of people can be said to ‘run’ the City. Instead there is a complex matrix of players, whose reputation and power is subject to market revision, and who collectively make up the loosely defined entity that is the ‘City’.

Changes in the business of financial services have also brought physical changes. The Square Mile, characterised by such enduring monuments as the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and – more recently the Gherkin – has expanded to other parts of town. To the east Canary Wharf is now home to big investment banks such as HSBC and Citibank who went to Docklands in search of cheaper rents and space to accommodate the vast trading floors needed for their industrial-scale operations. Feature continues

In the west, Mayfair, a neighbourhood recently cluttered with airline offices and vaguely anonymous outfitters, is now over-run by new restaurants, clubs and shops catering to hedge fund and private equity managers – the self-styled alpha males of City talent – who have come in search of the lifestyle, access to wealthy clients and, in some cases, cheaper rents.

Spared much of the regulation and box-ticking that accompanies more mainstream financial services, the influx of small-scale and mostly privately-owned hedge funds into the West End represents something of a return to the old City –a clubbable and discreet place to do business, that also happens to be close to the homes of many of its managers.

With its sleek interiors, casino, fusion-cuisine and under-lit dancefloor, a private members’ club like ‘Fifty’ on St James’s Street is a world away from traditional gentlemen’s clubs like the Athenaeum or Reform. Round the corner on Piccadilly the high-ceilings and harlequin tiles of the Wolseley play host to the finance crowd. ‘It’s like a mob scene some mornings. There’s so much traffic, with all the big players jockeying around,’ says one hedge fund manager.

The old City was in many ways very English and quite insular, with jobs often dependent on the old boys’ network or school tie, the City of today is a wide mix of national, ethnic and social backgrounds. Once a City gent – and it almost always was a he – may have assumed the airs and graces of the landed aristocracy. While that tradition is certainly not dead, it is doing battle with a new aesthetic where the role models are as likely to be rock stars as country squires.

This summer the City’s best and brightest gathered for their own version of a summer festival: Hedgestock. People for whom an ordinary day at the office involves the polishing of mind-blowing algorithms that underpin fiendishly cunning investment strategies chilled out to the likes of Randy Groover & The Fabulous Flirtations. A little different to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot and the better class of tent at Henley.